Teaching grammar

Plan

1. The role of grammar in EFL

2. Strategies of grammar teaching

3. Grammar practice and grammar habits

4. Basic principles for grammar teaching

5. Deductive and inductive Approaches to teaching grammar

The role of grammar in EFL

A number of researches stress the importance of grammar instruction. When EFL learners try to communicate, more likely than not their language is flawed with mispronunciation, unnecessary pauses, inappropriate usage, and grammatical mistakes. One major objective of EFL teaching is to develop learners’ communicative competence and at the same time improve the accuracy and fluency of their language. Grammar is seen as an integral part of language use; it is a resource to be accessed for effective communication, nor just an isolated body of knowledge. Therefore, grammar is central to the teaching and learning of languages. However, it is one of the more difficult aspects of language to teach well.

In theory and practice of grammar teaching there are at least two controversial points of view on the way grammar should be taught. On the one hand, there are people who usually think of grammar as a fixed set of word forms and rules of usage. This traditional pedagogy for language forms came to be known as focus on forms approach. It is rather analytical, treating linguistic forms as discrete elements and trying to help students accumulate knowledge over time. Thus language teachers who adopt this definition focus on grammar as a set of forms and rules. They teach grammar by explaining the forms and rules and then drilling students on them. This results in bored, disaffected students who can produce correct forms on exercises and tests, but consistently make errors when they try to use the language in context.

On the other hand, there are language teachers who support the idea of language acquisition (in contrast to language learning) and consequently tend not to teach grammar at all. They expect students to learn their second language in the way we acquire our first language, i.e. without overt grammar instruction. They assume that students will absorb grammar rules as they hear, read, and use the language in communication activities. However, this approach does not allow students to use one of the major tools they have as learners: their active understanding of what grammar is and how it works in the language they already know.

The communicative competence model balances these extremes. Firstly, the model assumes that grammatical structures have not only form; they are also used to express meaning in context-appropriate use. Thus it recognizes that overt grammar instruction helps students acquire the language more efficiently. Language teachers provide explanations of each point of grammar either in the target language or the students’ first language or both with the aim to facilitate understanding. However the time devoted to grammar explanations is usually limited to 10 minutes. Secondly, the communicative competence model incorporates grammar teaching into the context of teaching students to use the language. Instructors using this model teach students the grammar they need to know to accomplish defined communication tasks. An important part of grammar instruction is providing examples, which are used as teaching tools. Examples focus on a particular theme or topic so that students have more contact with specific information and vocabulary.

Strategies of grammar teaching

As any other aspect of language, grammar should be taught in a way that students find interesting and useful. Larsen-Freeman argues, since grammar is complex, and students’ learning styles vary, learning grammar is not likely to be accomplished through a single means, but can be achieved through teaching different strategies. Learning different strategies has a profound effect on learning grammar.

Language learning strategies have been classified by many scholars. However, most of these taxonomies of language learning strategies reflect more or less the same classifications. Grammar learning strategies are mostly strategies that contribute directly to language learning. They are usually subdivided into two groups: cognitive and metacognitive. Cognitive strategies refer to the steps or operations used in learning or problem-solving that require direct analysis, transformation, or synthesis of learning materials. They are as follows:

Clarification / Verification

Guessing / Inductive Inferencing

Deduction: applying the rules to make correct examples

Practicing

Memorization

Analyzing and reasoning

Repetition: imitating or repeating a sample in order to learn it,

Recombination: combining the existing data in a new context in order to make a meaningful sentence,

Translation: translating the material from the second language to the first one

Elaboration: relating new information to prior knowledge, relating different parts of new information to each other, or making meaningful personal associations with the new information

Transfer: using previous linguistic knowledge or prior skills to assist comprehension or production.

Metacognitive strategies are used to oversee, regulate or self-direct language learning. The emphasis is laid on the planning, self-management, self-monitoring, and self-evaluating. Planning includes advance organizers, directed attention, functional planning, selective attention, and self-management. Self-monitoring is the process of correcting one’s speech for accuracy in pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, or for appropriateness related to the setting to the people who are present’. Therefore, the instructor encourages the learners:

1. To use their findings in sentences;

2. To monitor their comprehension by themselves (self-monitoring) through thinking aloud; that is to reflect and express what was happening in their minds through engaging with the problem;

3. To ask themselves “Do I understand the grammatical points of the sentences?” ;

4. To make connections;

5. To make predictions;

6. To make inferences, and

7. To find what part of the sentences prevents them from understanding.

As Cohen (1998, p. 69) stated, the first step in strategy training is “to help learners recognize which strategies they already use, and then to develop a wide range of strategies, so that they can select appropriate and effective strategies within the context of particular language tasks.”